Donna,
May I ask why you find it necessary to use both AV and MI in your office? The
reason I ask is that I've been using MI Pro 5.0 for about 9 months but found
that I was being asked to run analyses that I wasn't capable of doing with out
of the box MI. These analyses involve patient accessibility to our provider
network i.e. how many providers are within how many miles of particular
patients. I looked for a cost effective extension for MI but couldn't find any
that met my needs and I have no experience programming (although I am trying to
pick it up). I was able however to get a good deal on an extension to AV that
did exactly what I needed (Patient Access).
To make a long story short I am using MI Pro for 90% of my mapping and AV for
the other 10%. Note that we have 5 licenses for MI but I do 99% of the GIS work.
But, I've begun to wonder whether it makes sense to have both packages. It seems
like having Word and Wordperfect on the same machine.
We will begin to assemble our wish lists for the 2001 budget soon and I've been
asked to outline our GIS needs. So, I'm struggling with: a) Keeping both
packages on my machine and MI on everyone else's. b) Converting everyone to AV.
or, c) Staying with MI and learning to program for my particular needs (kind of
a painful approach after selling the idea of purchasing AV). Mixing the two
systems means purchasing data for both systems (primarily streets for geocoding
or MapMarker updates with occassional ZIP boundary updates).
To further cloud the process I find particularly favorible attributes in each
package. And in fact lean towards continuing to use each as the particular job
warrants.
I assumed until just recently that a person used one or the other but not
necessarily both. Would you mind sharing your thoughts?
I posed a similar question to Tony D. as he has experience with both packages
and recieved a great reply . I'm not so interested in MI vs. AV now but in
whether using both in the same department is in fact not so uncommon.
I apologize for the long winded question and will submit it to the list to avoid
asking it again.
Rob Glazier, Market Analyst
Aurora Health Care
Milwaukee, WI
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